5. Birth control pills are declared safe
On May 9, 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Pill as a safe form of birth control. Forty-eight years later, it’s the most popular form of reversible birth control.

6. Tubal ligation becomes an option for all women
Get this: Until 1969, a woman couldn’t elect to have her tubes tied unless she fit a formula—her age multiplied by the number of children she’d delivered had to equal 120 or more. (What that means: If you were 30 years old, you would have to have had four kids before a doctor would have agreed that you’d done your share of “women’s work” and sterilized you, unless another pregnancy would have posed a health risk.) But in 1970, tubal ligation got the green light for all and is now the leading method of birth control.

7. Women finally get straight talk about their bodies
If you need to know something about your body, what do you do? Look it up, of course. But before 1970 there weren’t any good resources. That year a group of Boston women published a stapled-together booklet—the precursor to Our Bodies, Ourselves—and fueled the burgeoning idea that women should be full participants in their medical care. Three years later, the radical publication (which discussed such issues as sexuality and birth control) was beefed up and released by Simon & Schuster. It’s now in its eighth edition.

8. Girls get straight talk, too (thanks to Judy Blume!)
Periods, flat chestedness, masturbation, sex. No topic stressing the teen girl was off limits for revolutionary writer Judy Blume. In 1970s classics like Deenie, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, and Forever, Blume gave readers fictional alter egos that reassured us—you are so normal.

9. Edith Bunker goes through the change